Dubai: Israeli fire killed five Palestinians and wounded at least 21 during clashes Friday near Gaza’s border, the first unrest-related deaths there after days of violence in occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank, medics said.
The clashes came as Hamas’s chief in Gaza called violence that has hit the occupied West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem an intifada, or uprising, and urged Palestinians to resist.
Ahmad Al Hirbawi, Shadi Dawla and Abed Al Wahidi, all aged 20, were killed when soldiers responded after youths threw stones at them on the Israel side of their common boundary, Gaza medics said.
The fourth victim was Mohammad Al Raqab, 15. A fifth Palestinian was later killed by Israeli fire.
The clashes erupted east of Gaza City and east of the southern city of Khan Younis.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli occupation forces said about 200 Palestinians had approached the fence while hurling rocks and rolling burning tyres towards security forces.
“Forces on the site responded with fire towards the main instigators to prevent their progress and disperse the riot,” she said.
The spokeswoman confirmed “five hits” without elaborating.
In a Friday sermon at a mosque in Gaza City, Hamas’s Gaza chief Esmail Haniyeh said “we are calling for the strengthening and increasing of the intifada”.
“It is the only path that will lead to liberation,” he said. “Gaza will fulfil its role in the Jerusalem intifada and it is more than ready for confrontation.”
Stabbing attacks in the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem and Israeli-claimed territories inside the Green Line along with rioting have raised fears of a third Palestinian intifada, following a first that began in 1987 and a second in 2000.
Islamist movement Hamas rules Gaza, the enclave squeezed between Egypt and Israel and separated from the West Bank. It remains deeply divided from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
Gaza has been the site of three wars with Israel since 2008, but had remained mainly calm amid the recent unrest in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem until Friday.
Last summer’s 50-day war between Palestinian fighters in Gaza and Israel left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead and 100,000 homeless.
Israelis, meanwhile, are nervous about a new Palestinian intifada breaking out.
The Israeli authorities are encouraging vigilante justice by asking Israeli civilians to confront Palestinians. Many now carry their own weapons.
The Israeli occupation’s “mayor” in occupied Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has gone as far as to encourage residents who own guns to carry them around with them.
“Possessing weapons increases the confidence of residents,” he said on Monday as he toured occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, his own gun in full sight. “They will increase the likelihood of fast intervention.”
— With inputs from agencies
